A woman walks through sand on the corner of Atlantic and St. Katherine's Place in Atlantic City, N.J. Saturday Nov. 3, 2012. Area residents were assessing damage after Hurricane Sandy.

Written by

Eugene Linden | McClatchy Newspapers

Even as Sandy underwent its bizarre metamorphosis from hurricane to winter storm, the question arose in many inquiring minds (at least those not beholden to a solemn oath of climate-change denial): Was this historic storm a symptom of global warming? Climate science has two ready answers: Absolutely! And, of course not!

On the one hand, a warming globe makes megastorms more probable, while on the other, it is impossible to pin a global warming sticker on Sandy because the circumstances that turned it into a monster could have been mere coincidence.